Should I discourage my kids from going to Uni?

MrHippo

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

I can see you're not big on academic education but to suggest that Psychology and Criminology is a useful degree is just laughable.

How so? My mate has just such a degree, he's a now a chartered psychologist working with offenders. His degree has proved to be very useful indeed! How do you think people get to become psychologists or criminologists if they don't do a degree in those subjects? It is possible but much harder. I enjoy a successful academic career that pays just fine, wouldn't have it without my psychology degree.

Firetastic

At the moment I am doing a HNC in Social Sciences. My course consists of Politics, History, Sociology and Psychology. A HNC is equivalent to 1st year at Unviersity.

However the Social Sciences Department are going to be getting hammered by the cut backs. Why? Although it is useful to be able to argue well and be able to write essays it is not helpful to the economy.

However I am enjoying my course. Right now I am revising for a big exam on Friday. I have especially enjoyed Psychology and Sociology. I find looking at all the different angles of behaviour and society very interesting. Plus there is a variety of subjects so you have knowledge in different subjects.

ViolaLass

wintersunshine wrote: »

I don't want to rule my children's life. But in their 30s, when the loan repayments really kick AND they are trying to buy a house AND find money to spend time with their kids I don't want them to think I just stood by and let them get into tons of debt either.....

If they wanted to take drugs would you expect me to just sit around and tell them it was there life and they can just do what they want?

If they earn £35k a year, they will have to repay £1260 per year. (9% over £21k)

A useful sum but hardly a kick.

shop-to-drop

ViolaLass wrote: »

If they earn £35k a year, they will have to repay £1260 per year. (9% over £21k)

A useful sum but hardly a kick.

You need to remember though that that is just the loan for tuition fees. There will also be loans for living expenses and probably a bank overdraft as well.

WolfSong2000

wintersunshine wrote: »

Please how did you fund all that?

Personally? A mixture of savings, work and very generous parents. I decided to do my MA quite late in the day, so missed a lot of scholarship deadlines, especially as there's a lot less for British students studying here than there is for foreign students studying in the UK (some funded by the British government, which irked me slightly).

If you're organised, though, it's definitely doable. If I hadn't have had the funds up-front then I would have worked for a few years to save the money to do it.

ViolaLass

shop-to-drop wrote: »

You need to remember though that that is just the loan for tuition fees. There will also be loans for living expenses and probably a bank overdraft as well.

Loans for living expenses do not mean that they'll be paying any more each year, they'll just owe more.

I managed to come out of my degree and masters without an overdraft and not because I got university or parental funding (not having a go at those who did).

flora48

I can only hope that with the rise in tuition fees there will be a rise in quality of some courses on offer. My step daughter could have completed her degree in 18 months, she never spent more than half the week at uni, lectures cancelled regularly by e-mail and spent most of her final year at home sleeping.

I was chatting to a young teaching colleague who was finding teaching hard work beacuase he was only used to having 2 hours lectures each week when not on Teaching Practice. My daughter's housemate also only had 2 hours lectures each week much to the chagrin of her dad who was paying the bills for her.

I would only support my children in deciding to go to uni nowadays if they had a clear idea of what they wanted to do and would certainly be asking questions about the amount of tuition given. There is much merit in knowing what you want to do and training appropriately, university is not right for everyone.

mountainofdebt

Well having read Martin's feature on student loans, I'm amazed that a student will get penalised for paying off their loans early.

We're always being told that making the minimum payment on our credit cards is a bad thing to do and yet the governent will penalise those that do exactly that on their student loans.

The other thing to note is that repayments to a student loan account isn't credited (if that makes sense) to the account until the end of the tax year even though payments are made throughout the year. This is my opinion is totally wrong - we wouldn't tolerate this on our credit card accounts so why is it allowed on a student loan account?

nad1611

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

I can see you're not big on academic education but to suggest that Psychology and Criminology is a useful degree is just laughable.

Have you done a degree in Psycholgy and/or Criminolgy then? Let's hope you never need a Psychologist.

My daughter's doing Psychology at present. She needed 3 A's at A level and achieved more, it's a BSc not a BA. Meaning that the content covers Neuorlogy,Biology,Chemistry as well as Psycholgy-Biological, -Environmental and Statistical.

Why would any of these core subjects not be useful?

Breast_Cancer_Survivor

As I said in the other thread my eldest son will be starting his A levels in September, he is doing Maths, Biology, Chemistry & Physics but will probably drop the Physics in the 2nd year.

He fully intends to go to Uni afterwards to get a Scientific degree as he wants to be a Forensic Pathologist/Scientist.

I'm 100% behind him as I know that's his dream & it's a well paid job that will also give him enormous satisfaction at the end of the day.